Getting Along

Holiday week. 4^th of July. One of my favorites. Thanksgiving is first, then the 4^th.

The day we set aside each year to celebrate our nation’s founding, is very special to me. It speaks of history, sacrifice, death and life. The huddled masses of our ancestors seeking a better place to live. They traveled perilous seas from their homelands to reach us from the east. They trekked over a 1000 miles of dessert and mountains to reach us from the southlands. And many were captured, abducted and enslaved, crossing the Atlantic in the holds of prison slave ships from Africa. They survived with illness and disabilities. Over 35% of them perished en route.

From most continents they came to our land, a land we assumed from the Native Americans already here. We took their land and gathered them into compact spaces, later moving them en masse to reservations in the southwest deserts. Captured, abducted, enslaved – sound familiar to another huddled mass that came this way?

History is a story that must be told. It is told in many forms. Some happy; some sad; some true; some false. This becomes our mythology, a reality not fully earned. It is escapist on the one hand, and wishful thinking on the other.

True history is blunt. It is honest. It must be so because that teaches us things about our roots we need to know. Settling America was not all sweetness and light, or rosy sunsets with the girl riding snuggly behind the cowboy atop the mighty steed. No sir. Our story is much more raw than that.

Facing it is humbling. Humility is empowering. It is our chance to be honest with the inner self so the outer self is more capable of handling the twists and turns of life. Such reality needs honesty if we are to live life fully.

Fully. We see the world clearly when humble. We feel the world keenly as well. This allows deep insights to form. The role of others in our lives becomes a bold model. And we learn to talk, hear, reason together. We find common ground on so much. Differences lessen. Compromise and agreements to move forward occur.

We learn to get along.

That is a far cry from what America is experiencing today.

But we must get along. If not today, then tomorrow. And that happens only when we give each other enough respect and space to reason together. Quiet the bitter tongue. Pull forth the manners. Engage one another in the common things we hold special.

Congress needs this. So do our churches. So do the neighborhoods and towns and villages across America. So too, the White House; choosing a Supreme Court Justice nominee should be easy. Choose the best legal mind. Choose someone who can listen to one another and discern fine points of logic and legal precedent. Perhaps not an ideologue? Perhaps a middle of the road person who sees the value of both ideologies and the blending of the two, or three, or perhaps four?

A middle of the road person? What a great idea. Someone to balance the forces of Right and Left.  Someone to give pause to the sass and sarcasm. A justice with justice coursing through hiss/her mind and veins. Someone worthy of the greatness of the position and the need of the nation.

Might we see this happen? We will if we learn to get along with one another. This is not a fight to win, but to lose.

We are better than this petty stand-off. So let us rise to what our forefathers demanded of themselves and us. Fairness. Justice. Forgiveness.

May the spirit of past 4^th’s rule our lives long into the future.

July 6, 2018